A few non-BPA resources

Biblical Principle Approach, Language Arts, Literature, Mathematics No Responses »

Sep 152009

I have taken to buying books–lots of books. I buy literature from a local used bookstore and lots of resource books from mega-bookstores and my local used homeschool store. I like to buy books that I can refer to over and over for ideas and inspiration. I need to jazz up my lessons but I’m not always sure how to do it. Once I have the basic lesson planned, I need to provide a create outlet for expressing the principles we learn, and I have many books on my shelf that do not ascribe to a Biblical Principle Approach philosophy but are terrific nonetheless. These resources are for elementary ages.

Alternatives to Worksheets (and More Alternatives to Worksheets) has such great ideas for things we can put in our notebooks that aren’t worksheets. This is very easy to use in our studies because there’s nothing to change at all. It is simply fun projects that don’t involve a worksheet. The ideas work for any subject any time of the year. I have used their projects in math, Bible, literature and history. (The also have Better than Book Reports, which is great too.)
Big Book of Books by Dinah Zike is also great. We make many little books for our notebooks with ideas from Dinah. She has books on many school subjects that you can also use to add to your lessons.
How to Get Your Child off the Refrigerator and Onto Learning by Carol Barnier is another highly recommended resource for any parent struggling with high energy children. She is a homeschool mom who developed all sorts of strategies while home schooling her busy son. There are tons of high energy ideas for every subject and lots of practical advice on dealing with field trips and church. I can’t say enough about this great book. Princess G loves every idea I have ever tried from this book. It gets us up from the desk and moving and learning.
365 Reading Activities from Backpack Books has a year’s worth of great activities. They also make one for phonics and crafts (which I also have). They are all good for quick ideas to add to your lessons.
The internet. I can’t believe the stuff I have at my fingertips. Encyclopedias, dictionaries, crafts, and lots more at the click of a mouse. Yesterday Princess G saw a flip book and thought that would be a fun thing to try. In less than 5 minutes I googled one and printed out a neat running dinosaur flip book. That’s just almost too easy!
Daily Grams are an easy way to keep up the grammar skills. Each exercise takes only 5 minutes or so and Princess G really likes them. They begin at 2nd grade (the pink book).
Math Art is also filled with fun ideas to spice up math time with a place value snake, fraction flags and quilts, multiplication house, tesselations and weaving number patterns.

This is only the tip of my resource vault iceberg. I will share more in my next post.

Evan Moor History Pockets

Hands On, History 5 Responses »

Sep 052009

I am always looking for fun ways to teach my boys with a hands on approach. The other thing I am looking for is easy to use curriculum to accomplish that task. I found some wonderful hands on products that my kids just love to work on and put together. Evan Moor publishing has a line of History Pockets which helps bring history alive in your children grades 1-6.

Evan Moor-History Pockets Life in Plymouth Colony

As your child is learning about history, he/she is building a portfolio with hands on projects that slip into pockets. I was so excited to see how it all got put together. The pockets were much larger than I originally thought it would be. It made it much easier to store all the things we made and also very fun to do.

Plymouth Colony Porfolio Cover

What do you get when you purchase a History Pocket Unit?

Grades 1-3 Pockets:

Reproducible reading booklets
Historical background facts
Picture dictionary
Arts and crafts activities
Evaluation forms

Grades 4-6 Pockets:

Historical background facts
Maps and timeline
Arts and crafts projects
Reading and writing connections
Evaluation forms

Pocket 2 Contents of Plymouth Colony

Each pocket is put together by using a 12” x 18” sheet of construction paper. Each history unit involves 7-9 pockets. With each pocket you will find background information, vocabulary words to learn, and activities and crafts to complete each with an individual theme that works together for the overall unit study.

Pocket with Items Tucked Inside

Once you purchase the book, you will need to make copies of all the templates or copy sheets in the book that will be included in the portfolios. Not all pages need to be copied. Since you copy what you need this book can be used over and over again for each of your family members.

Pocket Items from Plymouth Colony

Grades 1-3 are filled with stories to color, crafts to make, things to cut out and paste, vocabulary words to learn that have corresponding pictures to help illustrate them.

Vocabulary Words

Grades 4-6 are filled with fun facts bookmarks, timelines to build, many activities, things to color, paste and cut out as well as crafts to make.

If you have a hands on learner in your home, you will love these products. These history pockets come in these topics below:

Grades 1-3

Life in Plymouth Colony
Ancient Civilizations
Native Americans

Grades 4-6

Moving West
Ancient Greece
Ancient Egypt
Explorers of North America
Colonial America

When you explore Plymouth colony you will:

Build a diorama, put together pilgrim puppets, learn the Mayflower Compact, learn what to pack when traveling on the Mayflower, learn about the tithing man while building a tithing stick, learn the jobs in the colonies, make a hornbook while learning about school, learning about quilting and much, much more..

Plymouth Colony Pocket 6 Contents

When you explore the American Revolution you will:

Build your own timeline, make a pop up book about the Boston Massacre, learn about famous Patriots while making a pop up of George Washington, learn about Paul Revere’s ride, learn about the soldier’s life and uniforms, building a diary and much, much more..

What a wonderful way to teach children about history while they build there own keepsake portfolio. To watch my kids get excited about history and they couldn’t wait to get something to color, cut out or explore was priceless. My children will cherish if for years to come.

Written by Lynn Pitts, mom of 3, from Big Sky Country Montana. You can read more about our life at Learning by Living.

Reading Made Easy

Charlotte Mason, Language Arts, Phonics, Uncategorized 2 Responses »

Jun 152009

rme As a homeschooling Mom one of my happiest jobs has been teaching my children to read, and one reason it has been such a positive experience for me and my children is a wonderful reading curriculum called Reading Made Easy.

When I began thinking about what I wanted in a reading curriculum, I knew that something natural and conversational would be the best choice for my son’s learning style. Lots of heavy phonics drills and written work would have quickly burned him out. When I found Reading Made Easy I realized that it was everything we needed. It is written by Valerie Bendt, a homeschool Mom who taught her six children to read in a relaxed, enjoyable way. Gleaning from her experiences with her own children, Mrs. Bendt wrote a reading curriculum that makes learning to read a delightful part of the school day.

The curriculum consists of a teacher’s manual, which is available in hard copy and on CD. (There is also an optional set of workbooks, which are a new addition to the program, but I have not yet had the chance to use these.) The manual contains one-hundred eight phonics-based lessons which teach letter sounds, word families, blends, digraphs, and sight words. Even though this is a phonics-based curriculum, it does not place an emphasis on memorizing phonics rules. The emphasis is on learning to decode words, derive meaning from the text, and enjoy reading. A simple system of phonics clues, or symbols, is used to help the child learn new sounds. For example, short vowels are written in grey, blends are circled, sight words are underlined, silent letters are dotted, and so on. In later lessons the symbols gradually taper off, and by the end of the manual, the child is reading “regular” print with no clues. It thrilled my son to work toward this goal and reach it!

The short lessons, which take less than thirty minutes to complete, are effective and nurture a love of reading. They are completely scripted and include:

review and practice of skills learned in previous lessons
teaching and practice of new concepts
a story for the child to read (Early on, the stories are only one or two sentences in length, but in later lessons they consist of paragraphs and entire pages.)
a picture relating to the story with questions to sharpen observation and comprehension skills
an ordering/copy work activity: The child watches the teacher copy a sentence from the story onto index cards, writing one word per card. The teacher points out capitalization, punctuation, and phonics clues and then mixes the cards up. The student puts the words back in the correct order, and then copies the sentence. (The copy work is optional for students who might not be ready for a lot of handwriting.)
Students also have the opportunity to trace or draw the picture if they wish.
other hands-on activities

Mrs. Bendt suggests covering three lessons per week with a review day in between lessons, but you can choose whatever pace is best for your student. No recommended ages are given for this curriculum, but you could use it with any child who is ready to learn to read.

For me, the only drawback to Reading Made Easy is that all of the pictures are black and white; however, it didn’t seem to be a problem for my children. Each day they looked forward to their reading lessons and were so excited to read their new “stories”. This curriculum sets the child up for success in each lesson and helps to give them a strong sense of accomplishment. I enthusiastically recommend it!

You can learn more about Reading Made Easy at www.valeriebendt.com.

Written by Shannon, Unit Study/Charlotte Mason mother of three. Shannon takes pleasure in reading with her children and listening to them read to her. She blogs about their homeschool adventures at Song of My Heart.

Living Math Curriculum Review

Charlotte Mason, Mathematics 9 Responses »

Jun 102009

Living Math is a curriculum written by Julie Brennan, a professional CPA, a mom of four, and an obvious math lover. If you have heard of living math, you may think that this curriculum is full of hands-on games and puzzles with lots of living math books.

Actually it is more of a historical tour through time, looking at the mathematical developments of each period. Living books are the cornerstone of this curriculum although there are some puzzles and activities sprinkled among the readings.

pyramids

For example, you study Thales, the Greek Mathematician who was fascinated by pyramids and then do a hands-on pyramid measuring activity. (But these activities are not enough for a thorough math curriculum. In addition to the historical perspective Julie offers, you will still need to add the study of math facts taught through a skills or games based learning option. From what I’ve read on the Living Math Yahoo Group, most families use Living Math as a supplement to their existing math programs and textbooks.) There is a deliberate focus on integrating math into other subjects, so Living Math often crosses over into art, history, and science.

You can purchase the electronic materials online via Paypal, and Julie sends you links where you can download all the PDF outlines and activity pages. The curriculum is broken into four $20 units which are offered at three levels – Primary, Intermediate, and Advanced.

This is the outline for the four chronological units available:

Unit 1: Ancients and World Cultures
Unit 2: The Alexandrians and Medieval Math
Unit 3: Renaissance to Enlightenment
Unit 4: The Modern Age of Mathematics

(Sometime in 2009 a second cycle is supposed to be released. )

For each ($20) unit, you get a series of eight loosely organized lessons with a plethora of reading selections. Julie believes in “strewing” resources to create a learning buffet. That tendency is evident in her outlines. There are so many reading choices that it’s a bit overwhelming. It’s hard to know what is an essential book and which are supplementary books. It took me hours of poring over the book lists and studying Amazon.com to choose the best books. Because of the wealth of living books and emphasis on biographies, Living Math is a perfect fit for Charlotte Mason homeschoolers. You can add the mathematicians to your timeline, use real world problems to recreate what they discovered, and document it in a math notebook .

The Living Math units are not “open and go” curriculum. There are no schedules or boxes to check. It is more of an outline. Specific pages or chapters in each suggested book are listed clearly but you will not find a day by day schedule. For a math-challenged mom who is totally new to this style of learning math, there is some advanced preparation. Personally, I have to read over the lesson and mark the resources that I have on hand, preview them, and then try to schedule them. I also discovered that many of the activities are much harder than I anticipated. These are problem solving activities, often not the clear-cut “right and wrong” types of math I did in school. For example, we built a tower from straws and tape. Some of the activities and books have no answer keys, so if you don’t solve the problem, it can be a bit frustrating. To cope with this ambiguity, I’ve learned to approach the activities more as a time of fun exploration rather than a problem to solve.

According to the lessons themselves, “the pacing of the course is completely up to you. Much of the material in each lesson plan can be covered in two weeks.” So estimating two weeks per lesson, a unit should last about 16 weeks. In my experience, I would agree that two weeks per lesson is about right.

So, to make it more concise, for $20 you are getting reading lists, teaching notes, and some activities/handouts that can be used to supplement your existing math curriculum for approximately 16 weeks. Living Math is not a complete math curriculum but a study of math history through the ages using living books (which you purchase or borrow on your own).

Thales math notebooking page After using this material for about one semester, I do have some evaluations. If there were one or two unifying spines holding this curriculum together, I think Living Math would be more coherent. Because I don’t have the benefit of a strong math history foundation myself, I have to rely on the scattered chapters to do the teaching. In other words, I can’t draw up information from my own memory to teach about Pythagoras or Galileo. If the particular lesson relies on an out of print book that I don’t have, the lesson is weakened. Along those same lines, this curriculum works best for those who have access to a well stocked library. Purchasing all of the books listed is impossible, not just because of exorbitant cost but because many of the books are out of print.

Although I’ve shared some weaknesses in the program, I do strongly feel that for someone who does not understand the history of math (like me), Julie’s chronological outlines are immensely helpful as a starting point. So while we’re still using Unit 1, I have already purchased Unit 2 and plan to continue using her booklists and outlines.

If you are considering Living Math, I suggest you spend a few hours at The Living Math website. There is a wealth of free information that can point you in the right direction for your own studies. For example, the booklists for each level are free to download. With the booklists and an understanding of the philosophy, you could create your own math history unit. However, Julie’s outlines do relieve much of the planning burden. And if you’d like to read more about my own journey towards a more living approach to math, of which Living Math is part, visit Transitioning to Living Math. I also make some specific book recommendations there.

Written by Jimmie, Charlotte Mason flavored mom of one.

Story of the World

History No Responses »

Jun 062009

sotw I’d like to introduce you to one of my all-time favorite curriculums…Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer of Peacehill Press. As a Charlotte Mason, Classical, Unit Study inspired homeschool, Story of the World has been a wonderful fit for our family. There are four volumes available:

Volume 1: Ancient Times

Volume 2: The Middle Ages

Volume 3: Early Modern Times

Volume 4: The Modern Age

Our family has thoroughly enjoyed each and every one, but to save space – and since all the volumes are similar is style – I will take the time to describe only Volume 1.

Story of the World Volume 1: Ancient Times and Activity Guide

Ancient Times, Volume 1, Revised

The Story of the World Volume I: Ancient Times and Activity Guide together are a full-year’s worth of Ancient history instruction for the elementary grades. Recommended for grades 1st through 4th, they cover history from Nomads to the last Roman Emperor. The Story of the World Volume I: Ancient Times includes 32 chapters of child-friendly stories from many of the most important events in Ancient history. Reading the stories alone would be quite insightful, but using the Activity Guide along with the stories allows for a very thorough learning experience.

Included in the Activity Guide are comprehension questions, hands-on activity ideas, map work ideas with reproducible maps, reproducible coloring pages, supplemental reading lists, cross references to other history books and even review cards. There is more than enough included in the activity guide that you could go through the program twice and not repeat anything if you didn’t want to. The maps are simple and very easily understood by younger children, and completing the map work also serves as a review of the stories. The coloring pages add a nice visual for better understanding and something for little hands to do during reading time. The hands-on activities include everything from traditional recipes and games to crafts to writing exercises. There are even reproducible board games scattered throughout the Activity Guide! It’s absolutely chock full of ideas!

Most chapters of The Story of the World are broken into two reading sections. After reading one of the sections, it’s recommended that your child be asked the comprehension questions and do the map work that goes with that particular section. Another day, it is recommended that the second reading, comprehension questions and map work be completed. A third day (or more) is recommended to be set aside for additional activities and supplemental reading books. Of course, these are simply recommendations. The program can be used in a variety of ways.

In our homeschool, we would often read both sections in a day. As I read, my children would color the provided coloring page. I would save the questions and map work for the second day, when I would usually read one of the supplemental books, too. On the third day, we would do one or more of the hands-on activities. Our favorite activities involved recipes, but we did many of the crafts as well.

We were able to use the program as a family without any trouble. Obviously, my older daughter was able to do more or go further some of the time, but my younger son wasn’t left behind by any means. They each learn in different ways and this program fit them both very well. Depending on the activities chosen, every learning style can be reached! Oh, and in keeping all of their work in a notebook, we have a wonderful memory book that will be valuable as a review of our year’s worth of Ancient history study!

The Story of the World was written as either a homeschooling or classroom curriculum, with directions included for both. Personally, I think it would be fun to use in a co-op setting.

What a joy it was to study history chronologically and in such an intriguing and hands-on way. My children looked forward to history. Let me tell you, I never looked forward to history as a student! To hear my children ask if the get to learn history was music to my ears. And, I suppose I’ll admit that I actually learned right along with my children. Learning history chronologically was something I’d never done. I finally have a complete picture in my mind where, once, there were only bits and pieces floating around unconnected. The only two things I wish the program had included were timeline figures and a beginning chapter on Creation.

If you aren’t a hands-on learning type of person, this program may not be your style. On the other hand, even if you only use the maps and coloring sheets, I still believe it’s well worth the money. If you don’t like gathering extra books from the library, gathering supplies for projects or even having to make copies, this program might not be for you. Unless you simply read the stories, there is a little bit of preparation time involved. For my children, the preparation time I spent was worth it. Had my time been cut short for any number of reasons, though, it may have been more than I could’ve handled to do the necessary preparation.

Overall, I still highly recommend The Story of the World, Volume I: Ancient Times and the Activity Guide, as well as the other three volumes. It’s a thorough program that will give your child a good grasp of basic Ancient history. Any curriculum for which my children beg, is a keeper in my eyes!

For those of you who don’t prefer to read aloud, there are audio CD’s available. And for those who prefer tests to be sure your children are retaining the information, there are test books available, too. Click on the links above to see all the products that can be purchased with each volume.

By Cindy West, mom of three, from KY, who loves learning alongside her children! You can find her blogging at Our Journey Westward.

Lyrical Learning – Science Supplement

Science, Unit study resources No Responses »

May 282009

Lyrical Learning is good music, good science,and good-time learning!

I’m a lover of science and have been hodge-podging our science curriculum together for 8 years. I like to use a little bit ‘o this and a little bit ‘o that. Someday I’ll write and reveal my brilliant science curriculum, but not today. ; )

I want to talk about learning science by singing it. No, I’m not crazy. I’m a firm believer in using all the senses to help remember those science facts that we can’t seem to do. So, when I discovered Lyrical Learning I flipped my lid and bought them all. To read about why singing these camp songs work, read what Doug Eldon wrote about the brain and repetition here.

We started with Lyrical Life Science, because that’s where our 4 year rotation of science was, studying life science, biology. LLS starts with the scientific method, which, in my absolutely right humble opinion, is the key to understanding the scientific thought behind any field of science and it should be taught and revisited at the beginning of each school year.

Lyrical Learning books are packed full of scientific words and information. They do not say this is a full curriculum, it is meant as a supplemental learning tool. We have used vol. 1-vol 3 of the life science books and are planning to use Lyrical Earth Science this year.

I’ve used these supplements in different ways:
1. The first way is if you create your own science unit studies, then you can use these as your spine. They are thorough and provide a nice outline for a unit study.
2. You can pair up the concepts with whatever you are using for science – a text or off the shelf curriculum or your own. You may have to buy all the volumes in order to do this.

Helpful other tips:
1. Play the songs often.
2. Definitely have the children fill in the fill-in-the-blank worksheets in the work books to help them remember the science terms and to see them spelled correctly. If you don’t want to buy the workbooks, then make your own.
3. Don’t read the text to younger children. It is over their heads and they will tune you out. YOU read it and teach it to them as you explore your scientific studies. Older ones can read it – it is packed full of information and is a true wealth of knowledge.
4. You have to do hands-on things so that they will remember the information. Here are some of the things we have done or plan to do this year that go along with these books:

1. dissections – basic 7 kit at Tobin’s lab
2. zoo trips
3. My Body Book
4. Rock and mineral kits
5. Microscope unit study
6. Protozoa kit
7. Owl pellet dissection
8. Worm composting
9. Plant a garden, you don’t need much space, just a few square feet
10. Color detailed pictures of what you are studying
11. Read living books, picture books and do nature studies

To hear some samples of the songs visit Lyrical Learning.

Written by Brenda, classically eclectic mother of 5

The Elements – Chemistry Review

Science, Unit study resources 3 Responses »

May 102009

The Elements
by Ellen Johnston McHenry

Now let me introduce you to the profile of the compliant child: My oldest is very easy to homeschool. I could hand him a 500 pg. book to read, give him 3 pages of questions to answer, assign a 5 page typed report and he would comply by the following day. I know this about him but I do not take advantage of this with every subject. I do give him assignments at the beginning of the week and collect them on Friday and we have a discussion usually pertaining to history.

I wanted to enjoy this short bit of time that I still have with him, learning and sharing experiences before he starts high school and doesn’t want and/or need my help anymore. Two main areas (in addition to history because that is a given)that I wanted to share with my 7th grader this year was chemistry and Latin. So, I planned to spend time with him each week for these subjects.

Having said all this, my point is that I picked something for his particular learning style and something that we could enjoy together through a conversational type of learning. What I found in The Elements is a black and white text that reads like a book, written in 3rd person, cartoons throughout (you can never go wrong with boys and cartoons) and charming stories illustrating key points. One for example is The Periodic Kingdom, in which she explains the periodic table in a fantasy world of kings, nobles and outlaws. Since he is an avid fantasy LOTR/Eragon fan I knew this would click with him.

Topics covered:
The definition of an element, the structure of an atom, the invention of the Periodic Table by Mendeleyev, chemical formulas, electron orbitals and shells, the octet rule, arrangement of elements on the Periodic Table, atomic bonding (covalent, ionic and metallic), plus an up-close look at the families on the table: alkali metals, alkali earth metals, transition metals, true metals, non-metals, halogens, noble gases, and lanthanides and actinides. Click here, to see more info and download the first chapter free!

So this is how we use the program…
He and I read and laugh at the cartoons, discuss the text and he answers the questions, sometimes orally. We also do the Internet research questions and then to cement the learning there are creative activities. My oldest does not “need” these to learn the concept, but we do them anyways, because I “need” them and its another way to spend time together. The prep time can be high depending on what activity you pick, but I always pick the ones that I can handle that week. My favorite one is something that made the periodic table more fun then I could have ever imagined and I wish that I could have done something like this in my high school chemistry classes. The activity was making trading cards (picture baseball or Pokemon here) out of each element. I had two other siblings join in with this and we ended up with a whole set of the elements. Each card had a spot for:

-the symbol
- atomic #
- its “team” example: metals, nonmetals, noble gases
- name of element
- interesting facts
- it’s “field” or location on the periodic table
- a picture of element (in most cases it ended up being a picture of what the element is found in)

The children came up with several ways to play games with these cards. And they loved it! The other activities are also unique and not your typical science activity. Ellen is very creative with this portion of the book.

Did I mention there are cute thumb print characters in the form of cartoons on each page? they are too funny! And, while I’m mentioning, let me tell you about the CD of songs…only two. We ALL wished there were more to listen to.

Suggestions:
I do have a suggestion to compliment this study. Although this is an intro in chemistry, my over-achieving mind saw the need for a Chemistry kit. I got him the C2000 for Christmas and he plugs away through this on the weekends during his free time!

Written by Brenda, classically eclectic mother of 5

10 reasons to buy the curriculum guides even if you don’t use the Noah Plan

Biblical Principle Approach No Responses »

May 012009

The Noah Plan curriculum guides from the Foundation for American Christian Education are hefty tomes full of almost anything you need to know to teach a subject using the Biblical Principle approach. But those who use a different approach can still gain a lot from FACE’s work.

Time lines. While not comprehensive, their time lines are well done and informative, and highlight the use of the subject for the advancement of the Gospel. They are helpful for planning the history of any subject, and cross-referencing to see what was going on in other spheres at a particular point in history.
Resource lists. Especially in history and literature. They are a gold mine. In the history guide they are arranged historically. And their lists incorporate as many original sources and classics as possible for a book this size.
Charts, forms and graphs. Especially in English and the line maps in History and Geography. And they have sample notebook grading charts and other teacher tools.
The focus on Providential History. No matter what your approach, a Providential approach to history affects all subjects and shapes your Christian worldview. Each subject guide addresses that subject’s history
Research. In the literature guide, the information on Shakespeare is almost worth the price of the book. In each guide they offer original documents and a view of a subject that is hard to find in other homeschool resources.
Notebook examples. Even if you are not into traditional notebooking outlines and such, there are many examples of well thought out pages. They can inspire and challenge, or even help solve a problem.
The passion. The authors of each guide are master teachers, and reading their guides can spark an interest, rekindle an excitement or reinforce an idea. Anyone can get on board with doing things well, even if you aren’t keen on the specific methods.
The projects. Each guide offers ideas for projects that you can adapt to any unit study or textbook you may be using.
Tools. Things like word studies and the elements of notebooking are things that any teacher can use. Word studies will serve you well in elementary school through graduate school. It is an invaluable skill. And tools like sample notebook grading sheets can give you a place to start when creating your own materials.
Easy on the pocketbook. There is only one book to buy for each subject. It takes you from kindergarten through high school. All this goodness is wrapped up in one volume for each subject. The investment is only made once.

See samples of the guides here.

My Father’s World

History, Literature, Living books, Science 7 Responses »

Apr 042009

My Favorite Curriculum

by Korey

When I began homeschooling 3 years ago, I was looking for the perfect curriculum for every subject. In my first year I was so full of new ideas and excitement. I wanted to try everything and boy, did I. I had a separate program for Bible, geography, history, art, art history, music, science, math, grammar, spelling and and and………..

world_view_b2 You get the point. I had a lot to cover in one year. It was a perfect recipe for disaster. Did I get it all covered? No way! I had visions of nature studies, studying historical art pieces, reading classic novels and beautifully written pieces of writing but instead I was frustrated that I couldn’t meet up to the standards I had set for myself.

So when the first year of homeschooling was under my belt, I had to rethink my way of homeschooling. As a homeschooling mom, you know what that means. It means hours of looking at catalogs, searching the web, talking to other homeschool moms and even calling many curriculum companies. I was trying to figure a way to get perfect curriculum in all subjects! As I was searching I remembered someone mentioning “My Fathers World”. I had looked at it before but it was one of those pre-package curriculums and that was not what I wanted. I wanted to put together my perfect plan of curriculum on my own BUT I kept going back to “My Fathers World”. After hours and even weeks of deciding, I purchased this pre-package curriculum. Why would I do what I said I wouldn’t. I discovered that My Father’s World was the closest thing I could find to my perfect curriculum all in one package. So let me explain why I love it.

First, I love the philosophy of this program and how they put the heart of child first. That is what drew me to the program first. So let me go through the program and explain how it works. It combines the methods of Charlotte Mason and classical education.

My Father’s World has many one year unit study type programs starting with kindergarten and all way up to the high school years. We started with the Exploring Countries and Cultures program. This program is designed for 2nd-8th graders.

It is a multi-age unit study: The program is designed to be used with more than one child at a time. This is a big time saver! I teach all the subjects together except language arts and math.

Strong international focus: In Exploring Cultures and Countries you visit a country every two weeks. You learn about the country’s geography, ecology, and cultures. You spend time learning about the common religions in each of the countries you study.

Integrated Bible content: In Exploring Countries and Cultures you spend the year reading the book of Matthew and memorizing many verses from Matthew. You read about missionaries from the past and present. You learn what God is doing in other countries and you are shown how you can pray for each country specifically. It teaches a wonderful biblical worldview.

Geography: You do plenty of map work each week and with that you learn plenty of mapskills. Older students can do research projects as they study each of the continents. You play games to learn the names of all the countries, oceans, capitols, and continents. You make a passport and you place a flag sticker in your passport as you “travel” to each country. There are hands on activities such as cooking and flag making. You learn new geography terms every week which the student keeps in a journal.

Science : You spend the year studying habitats from all over the world. You spend time taking nature walks and keeping a nature journal.

Reading: There is plenty of living books provided with this program! My Father’s World does something called a reading basket. Everyday the children read books you have selected from the library or have purchased. The books are all related to what you are currently studying such as rain forests. You may have many subjects to chose from some fiction and non-fiction. There is a read alouds included in the program. The read alouds coincide with the country you are studying. In ECC the read alouds are true stories of missionaries.

Art and Music The program has plenty of art projects based on the countries you are studying. There is also a CD with ethnic music from around the world.

Language Arts, Math and Foreign language : They suggest certain LA and Math programs but you can add whatever you choose.

Now let me tell you the pros of this program: I love how it combines the methods of Charlotte Mason and classical education. It is a perfect mix of both of these philosophies. I love the journaling and the nature studies. The teacher manual is a huge plus. It so well laid out. Each week is laid out on a grid and then additional informational is given for the planned activities. The TM tells you what needs to be photocopied for the week and what extra supplies are needed. The supplies are easy to find items. The TM gives a list of books you can check out at the library or purchase for your reading basket. The TM is so easy to use, generally this program is an open and go. The bible is my favorite portion of the program. I love the memory verses. Easy to do but challenging. I love how it tells you to pray specifically for each country. You learn what challenges missionaries face in the field. I love how you can combine your kids for so many subjects. It turns learning into a family time together. I love the biblical worldview that is taught throughout the program. The crafts are easy to do and fun. I love how you can chose you own math and LA. The program is designed to be done 5 days a week and Friday is a light day. It can easily be turned into a 4 day week by combining Friday’s plans into other days of the week.

Now let me tell you the cons of this program: I felt the science to be a bit light for my taste. We did add more science to the program. My Father’s World is coming out with an updated version for ECC and it looks like they have added more to the science. You have to be okay with having everything all laid out for you. For me this was a plus since it is done so well. The music was not my favorite, a bit too kiddy for us. In the other programs of MFW the music is done more to my taste with classical music. We felt the read alouds to be a bit dry. We did add some of our own read alouds. If you don’t live near a library with a decent selection of books it would be hard to incorporate the reading basket idea.

My Father’s World is coming out with a new edition of Exploring Countries and Cultures. The science looks improved. There is less photocopying, and there is a nice supplement you can order for 7-8th graders.

We are in our second year of My Father’s World. We are presently using the Rome To Reformation program. We are loving this program just as much! We plan to stay with My Father’s World for the long road maybe even all the way through!

Korey, is our, no twaddle (great books), Charlotte Mason devotee and she homeschools two precious children. Her first-born has already flown the nest, and is away at college. She is also a part-time nurse. She loves science, spending time with her family and the splendor of the Lord.

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